Solace
by Tucagwathiel
Summary: "I can hardly get a few spells out now...no more than sparks, really." - Sequel to Fractured.


Summary: "I can hardly get a few spells out now…no more than sparks, really." - Sequel to Fractured.

Warning(s): None.

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, they belong to their respective owners.

Author's Note: This is the long-awaited sequel to Fractured, so please read that first before reading this. And no, there won't be any more oneshots for the Fractured universe, these two are it. For more reads, take a look at Golden, and tell me what you think! 

**Solace**

_He's getting better._

John likes to think. John likes to think that Harry finally understands that John and Sherlock are simply two souls looking to fix him.

Because he needed- _needs_ \- fixing.

Badly.

Because, for those first few weeks, Harry was like a broken toy, discarded and abandoned.

But every broken toy just needs a little TLC.

Tender Loving Care.

Three things deprived of him as a child. Because John knows he was deprived. A person, especially a growing boy, can't be seventeen and still look as young as Harry looked.

But they, Sherlock and he, have a lot of tender care to give to an impossibly lonely boy.

But, though there was still a long ways to go, John thinks that Harry is slowly getting well.

Or, at least, well enough to trust them a little with his past.

Granted it wasn't much, but enough to know that Harry never did have a childhood. Not a true one.

So, it came as a surprised when, one evening, Harry finally decided to tell them of his magic.

The most fantastical idea to ever exist, and…it was true!

If a person could imagine a more fantastical, amazing, wonderful, and terrible thing ever- they couldn't.

And it all started with a wand. 

_~x~_

"I can hardly get a few spells out now…no more than sparks, really," said Harry as he laid the wand on the table. His fingers skimmed along the wood before quickly taking his hand away, as if burned by the touch.

All three of them stared at it in varying amounts of emotions- one in disbelief, the second in varying mixtures of fascination and scientific skepticism, and the third…the third in a mixture of yearning and, at the same time, repulsion.

It was that second emotion Harry still had to come to grips with. For all that Harry had loved his magic; it could not overcome the cost that came with magic: the War, the pain, the…deaths.

Harry would just as gladly see the wand destroyed as to be able to feel the warmth of magic once more. To see _some_ modicum of evidence that Voldemort did not completely destroy the Wizarding World.

Alas, Harry knew enough to know when he was chasing pipe dreams.

The sound of Sherlock letting out a small tut broke Harry from his thoughts. "Thin, breakable material for an object of power. Not very logical or pragmatic. A person can easily break the wand, leaving the wizard defenseless."

Harry gave a bitter smile before placing the wand holster on the table, as well. "Wizards weren't known for their common sense and practicality. If wizards were logical, then they wouldn't have had a need for magic in the first place."

And, really, maybe Harry is not so much wizard now that his magic- and magic in general- is too broken.

 _But perhaps that is a good thing_ , John thinks selfishly, all the while trying not to let his thoughts sound too callous in his protectiveness over the young boy.

And perhaps it was.

For, surviving a war that dealt purely with magic, all the ties towards magic would have been tainted with painful memories.

To have, still, the same power that destroyed the wizarding world would be too painful, and would have left Harry as a husk of a human.

But it was almost a providence of fate for John to find Harry instead.

To heal and piece him back together from a broken toy to a battered, but whole toy instead.

After the showing of the wand, it was clear that something had changed between the two flat mates and Harry.

The connection between them and the boy seemed to get tenser and yet, at the same time, more relaxed.

It was clear that, after seeing the acceptance of his old abilities- having provided proof by attempting a weak levitation spell (the spell managed to lift a rather delicate paperweight an inch or two before the spell sputtered out, breaking the object; John and Sherlock were planning to get rid of it anyways)- Harry had wanted to tell them of what happened.

Had wanted assurance that it was okay to be a survivor from something he had no control over.

But, to tell something of a very personal nature to someone like John or Sherlock is hard. It is hard because people of one civilization rarely understand the cultural significances of others.

It is the reason why most wars start to begin with.

Not only that, but the story- and, indeed, were there any wizard alive still alive, the story would be considered an epic by now- is still too much to bear for one sitting.

So, summer turned to autumn and the air had quite a nip to it so that, in the evenings, John and Sherlock had taken to having the fireplace lit.

It was on one of these evenings, October 31 to be exact, that the three inhabitants found themselves sitting around the fireplace, cups of tea and hot chocolate passed around as a companionable silence fell around the room. The company was such that even Sherlock seemed disinclined to disturb the silence.

After some time has passed by the fire- no more than one or two hours tops- Harry let out a slight noise in the back of his throat.

At Sherlock's and John's inquisitive glances, still unwilling to break the silence yet curious all the same, Harry shook his head before he paused and spared a moment to think about it.

"It is nothing, just…it's the first Halloween I've had that is completely quiet," Harry admitted.

The two men lowered their cups in favor of the chance to know more about their young ward and Harry, seeing the looks, tightened his grip on his cup of hot chocolate. Finally, after a mental battle, Harry seemed to have come to a conclusion because, after a mouthful of chocolate to settle himself, he began.

He talked and he talked, speaking of the prophecy, the night of his parents' death and how he had been left to be raised by relatives who had too much love and importance for themselves and too much hate to the unusual to spare any for an orphan boy; of days spent in a cupboard and too little food though his relatives had more than enough to share, and of the chores and punishments.

He spoke of his first ever letter, which then led to his first ever friend and an owl that was his constant companion; of discovering a world that at first seemed like a dream...

Yet like a dream, it quickly grew into a nightmare.

He spoke of making friends and enemies, of adventures involving three-headed dogs, basilisks, and tournaments that really should have stayed in the past, and how year after year it felt like he was slowly losing a piece of himself.

Of how he had slowly come to the realization that he hadn't gotten freedom at all. Instead, he had simply traded his cupboard for a bigger, slightly roomier cage.

He had come to the conclusion much too slowly, but that seemed to be the usual for him; much too slow to save Cedric, much too slow to save Sirius.

It was after the death of his beloved companion, Hedwig, that Harry well and truly begun to feel numb; cut off from emotions and, well, everything to the point that he was merely going through the motions of everyday life.

And when he heard about being a horcrux, well, by then Harry was well beyond emotions of shock or anger and simply took the news with a weary sigh because of _course_ it would be just his luck that he had to die to make sure Voldemort was well and truly gone for good.

Death wasn't painful.

In fact, it was actually really, _really_ peaceful.

Peaceful enough that, for the longest moment, he had been seriously tempted to take the other option; to be selfish enough to simply _rest_ instead of continuing on and on and on with fighting and wars and things that no other boy his age should concern themselves with. His parents and godfather and _Hedwig_ were there. What did he have to go back to amongst the living?

It was at the last minute that Harry, ever unwilling to leave a job unfinished, decided to head back to the world of the living and finally managed to defeat Voldemort though it had devastating consequences in the end.

When Harry first voiced his thoughts of death, there was a hurried "No!" from John, the man having hurriedly set his cup and moved to Harry's side.

Capable hands, strong and calloused, gripped at Harry's shoulders in an almost painful grip as John crouched down in front of Harry.

" _No_ ," he murmured, quieter now but no less strong with a tone in his voice that simply made something in Harry sit up and take _notice_. For it was _this_ voice that John spoke to his fellow soldiers as captain, as comrade, as _friend_ , and it was _this_ voice that took charge and helped bear burdens even those unseen.

The shoulders trembled under his hands, and thumbs drew circled over clothed skin, dipping lightly along the clavicle. John idly noted that the boy was still far too thin. Not only that but that, no matter the weight gained, the boy would still be fragile; delicate, even, in mind if not in body.

Whereas John reacted in an outburst of emotions and frantic worry because Harry _can't_ be thinking what John thinks he's thinking- _he can't he can't, I won't let him_ \- Sherlock remains seated, fingers steepled and eyes closed, committing Harry's story to memory in a room of Harry's own in his mind palace.

Sherlock doesn't even have to _look_ to understand that it wasn't _death_ Harry sought after, in a voice so wistful and longing that one couldn't help but think it was that, but the _peace_ that had come with his death- a peace so final and everlasting that nothing in this world could ever hope to compete with it.

"John…"

A word, his name, spoken in the tone John had come to know from Sherlock was all it took for John to relax, loosening his grip on Harry's shoulders.

It is strange, perhaps, how such a simple address could erase tension with such ease, but such was the bond between the two men.

And staring up at them, at the bond the two men shared that Harry imagined what he and Ron might have had as they grew older had his friend lived, and seeing the similar bond that had begun forming tying him to John's and Sherlock's life as a permanent fixture, Harry made a decision.

He did not know where the future would take him; if he would fully recover in ten months or ten years or _ever_. But what he did know was that these men, these two men with an unlikely friendship, had taken him under wing with an understanding not many others had, not even his own relatives.

And _that_ \- perhaps more than anything- was what gave him…

Solace.


End file.
